okx at extro (Philip Rhoades) writes:
>Joseph J. Strout (strout at helmholtz) wrote:
>: On Sun, 12 Feb 1995, Patrick O'Neil wrote:
>[can't have too many humans or else we'll have to eat them ...]
If you gentlemen would like to read Eric Drexler's books, "Engines of
Creation" and "Unbounding the Future" then you might start to bring
your speculations into the nineties. Drexler's no snake-oil merchant;
he's a professor at MIT and the instigator and leading light of the
Nanotechnology movement.
Drexler's ideas suggest a future of boundless wealth, opportunity and
adventure, not for a few billion, but for trillions. Drexler's science
is sound, his engineering is feasible, and his timeframes are realistic;
if you can manage to live out the next century, or even if you are only
able to get your body cryonically suspended, you may well be able to
live for thousands of years and sail the solar wind to visit the
stars. These things are no longer whimsy, no longer science fiction,
but real engineering goals that we can and must achieve if our race is
to survive the next millenium.
--
Internet:pete at extro.su.oz.au | Accept Everything. |
http://www.usyd.edu.au/~pete | Reject Nothing. |